Seymour Hersh

As an investigative reporter for The Associated Press, The New York Times and now The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh has primarily covered national security and intelligence. Over the years, he has broken several major stories, including the U.S. government’s development of chemical weapons, the My Lai massacre and the CIA’s domestic spying operations. More recently, Hersh helped expose abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The Pulitzer Prize winner is also the author of nine books.

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On Nov. 12, 1969, reporter Seymour Hersh broke a shocking story about a massacre of hundreds of unarmed men, woman and children in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Hersh explains that the story started with an anonymous tip and led him to Fort Benning, Georgia, where the Army…

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My Lai Massacre

On Nov. 12, 1969, reporter Seymour Hersh broke a shocking story about a massacre of hundreds of unarmed men, woman and children in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. Hersh explains that the story started with an anonymous tip and led him to Fort Benning, Georgia, where the Army…

Seymour Hersh says that after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote the book "All The Presidents Men" about how they broke the Watergate scandal, part of any big investigative story became how reporters got the story.

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Getting the Story

Seymour Hersh says that after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote the book "All The Presidents Men" about how they broke the Watergate scandal, part of any big investigative story became how reporters got the story.

Seymour Hersh talks about how American John Walker Lindh, who was captured in 2001 by the U.S. military in Afghanistan while fighting with the Taliban, signaled the way detainees in the war on terror would be mistreated.

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John Walker Lindh

Seymour Hersh talks about how American John Walker Lindh, who was captured in 2001 by the U.S. military in Afghanistan while fighting with the Taliban, signaled the way detainees in the war on terror would be mistreated.

Career Timeline

1958

Graduating from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in history, Hersh is admitted to the University of Chicago’s law school but flunks out.

1959

Hersh begins his journalism career as a police reporter for the City News Bureau in Chicago. He then joins the U.S. Army and works as a public information officer at Fort Riley, Kan.

1962

Hersh starts his own weekly newspaper, the Evergreen Dispatch, but is unsuccessful with ad sales and the publication quickly folds. He joins United Press International in South Dakota, where he covers the legislature and the Oglala Sioux tribe.

1963

Hersh becomes a correspondent for The Associated Press . Two years later, he is transferred to the Washington bureau to cover the Pentagon.

1967

Hersh, by now on the AP’s special investigative unit, is upset that editors watered down a lead about the U.S. government’s development of biological and chemical weapons. He quits and sells the story to The New Republic.

1968

For three months, Hersh serves as the press secretary for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. After leaving the campaign, he writes several pieces for The New York Times and The New Republic on chemical and biological weapons. His research also leads to his first book, “Chemical and Biological Warfare: America’s Hidden Arsenal.”

1969

Hersh receives a tip that Army 1st Lt. William L. Calley Jr., is going to be court-martialed for a massacre of civilians in Vietnam by U.S. troops. (The My Lai massacre took place on March 16, 1968.) Hersh flies to Salt Lake City to talk to Calley’s lawyer, and then to Fort Benning, Ga., to find Calley himself. He writes the story while flying back to Washington, but multiple magazines turn it down. He sells the story to the Dispatch News Service, run by his neighbor Dan Obst. Hersh receives the 1969 Polk Award in the Special Award category for his work on the My Lai story.

1970

Hersh continues to follow My Lai, which becomes the basis of his second book, “My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath.” Hersh receives the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for the My Lai story.

1972

After receiving 40 volumes of top-secret official testimony from the military’s investigation of My Lai, Hersh exposes the government’s attempt to cover up the massacre in his third book, “Cover-up: The Army’s Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4.”

Hersh also starts working for The New York Times covering the Watergate scandal and competing with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

1973

1974

Reporting extensively on the CIA’s clandestine activities, Hersh discloses the U.S. covert efforts to destabilize the government of democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, prior to the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973. That same year Hersh also writes a groundbreaking story about the CIA’s domestic spying operations against anti-war dissidents during the Nixon years. A direct result of his story is the formation of the Rockefeller Commission and the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee for its chairman, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho.

1975

Working on an investigative team overseen by Bill Kovach, Hersh learns of a secret operation known as Project Jennifer to retrieve a sunken Russian nuclear submarine. The CIA was intent on retrieving codes for the atomic missiles aboard the sub. The first attempt failed and Hersh hears of the operation as the U.S. was preparing to retrieve the submarine again. He also learns that the Russians are aware of what is going on and has sent two cruisers to the area. The CIA convinces Clifton Daniels, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, to hold the story, but word leaks out and CIA has to persuade every major bureau chief in the city to hold off as well. Eventually the story is released.

1979

Hersh leaves The New York Times to write a book on Henry Kissinger, “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.”

1983

Hersh’s “The Price of Power” is published after four years and more than 1,000 interviews, and he wins the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction. As part of his voluminous reporting and research, Hersh realized that in his 1974 coverage of the CIA’s anti-Allende efforts in Chile, he had incorrectly implicated Edward M. Korry, the U.S. ambassador to Chile. In a front-page New York Times article in 1981, Hersh corrected his earlier reporting about Ambassador Korry.

1986

1991

His sixth book, “The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,” tells the story of how Israel obtained nuclear weapons.

1997

Critics attack Hersh’s seventh book, “The Dark Side of Camelot,” in which he describes details of President John F. Kennedy’s life including his extramarital affairs and dealings with mobsters.

1998

Hersh writes a story for The New Yorker, “The Missiles of August,” that criticizes the Clinton administration for bombing the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The article exposes the attack not as a raid on chemical warfare facility but as a retaliatory attack against terrorist Osama bin Laden.

2000

In another New Yorker article, Hersh details in “Overwhelming Force” how soldiers under the command of Gen. Barry McCaffrey massacred Iraqi troops during the final days of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

2001

In “The Price of Oil,” also in The New Yorker, Hersh exposes a business deal involving the Mobil Corporation, Kazakhstan and illegal trade to Iran. The story leads to the indictment of two people involved.

Weeks after the attacks on Sept. 11, Hersh reports in “King’s Ransom” that the Saudi royal family supported al-Qaida and other extremist groups. The article also analyzes the relationship between the royal family and the administration of President George W. Bush.

2002

Hersh continues his investigative work for The New Yorker, writing stories on the government’s case against terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui and the Bush administration’s attempts to kill members of al-Qaida.

2003

An article about Richard Perle’s business dealings, “Lunch With the Chairman,” prompts Perle’s resignation as head of the Defense Policy Board. In “The Stovepipe,” Hersh debunks the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq received uranium from Niger. Hersh writes about the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans in “Selective Intelligence.” These three articles win him the National Magazine Award for Public Interest.

2004

First published as a series in The New Yorker, Hersh releases “Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.” The book goes behind the public story of the war on terrorism, giving a detailed account of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and other problems stemming from the U.S. wars is Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hersh receives an unprecedented fifth George Polk award for the Abu Ghraib story.

2007

Hersh analyzes in “Shifting Targets” how the Bush administration was framing the public conversation to persuade the public to believe that the increased violence in Iraq was a direct result of support by the Iranian regime.

2008

In “Preparing the Battlefield,” Hersh continues to look at the Bush administration and Iran, reporting on a presidential finding signed by Bush to fund covert operations in Iran. He exposes how the scale and scope of the operations had been significantly expanded beyond its original intent.

2011

“Iran and the Bomb” investigates the status of Iran’s nuclear programs to see of its capabilities have been exaggerated by both the Bush and Obama administrations.